Karush Publishes Book on Radio and Cinema in Argentina

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Matthew Karush, associate professor of history, has published Culture of Class: Radio and Cinema in the Making of a Divided Argentina, 1920–1946.

His publisher, Duke University Press, explains that "in an innovative cultural history of Argentine movies and radio in the decades before Peronism, Matthew B. Karush demonstrates that competition with Hollywood cinema and jazz music shaped Argentina’s domestic cultural production in crucial ways. Argentine producers tried to elevate their offerings to appeal to consumers seduced by North American modernity. At the same time, the transnational marketplace encouraged these producers to compete by marketing 'authentic' Argentine culture . . . Analyzing tango and folk songs, film comedies and dramas, radio soap operas, and other genres, Karush argues that the Argentine culture industries generated polarizing images and narratives that provided much of the discursive raw material from which Juan and Eva Perón built their mass movement."